How the BBC won the West for ‘Palestine’ but lost its soul…

I am rarely lost for words. And almost never on a subject that I have been writing and “opining” about for some three decades, but the BBC’s remorseless, undisguised, grievously biased coverage of Israel over the past two years has frequently rendered me speechless. I have quite often felt less like someone able to express a coherent opinion, and more like the figure in Munch’s “The Scream.”

Mostly metaphorically but occasionally literally, the BBC has made me scream at the anti-Israel spin placed unerringly on virtually every story from every reporter or correspondent; at the incessant repetition of lies, libels, fake stories and fabrications; at a shameful refusal to retract stories that turn out to be false, or if forced to offer a “correction,” doing it so inconspicuously that, literally, no-one noticed; at its failure to report the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s rally or – infinitely more damagingly – the Government’s formal determination that Israel was not committing genocide in Gaza; at its more egregious refusal to report stories that might disrupt a narrative that allows only Palestinians to be victims such as the Jewish schoolboy attacked in London or, unbelievably, the Bibas family funeral on what was demonstrably a quiet news day; at its use of reports from quite openly hostile “sources” and from “trusted correspondents” who are Hamas operatives; at its collusion in artificially keeping “Gaza” on the news agenda; at its repeated, perfidious failure to contextualize stories or to explain that the source is not only not objective but is actively hostile to Israel; at its willingness to not only report the demonstrably false assertion of “genocide” and the demonstrably falsified allegations  of “mass starvation,” but then to repeatedly amplify and embellish those libels with “findings” from clearly hostile individuals and/or Mickey Mouse bodies.

But now, as we approach the second anniversary of the savage, brutal attack of Oct 7 that provoked this tragic Gaza war – and 50 hostages still held in Gaza –  I find that alongside the impulse to scream, I wish to point out to this once fine broadcaster how it has been comprehensively scammed, fooled and hoodwinked into becoming the willing accomplice of Jew-hating fundamentalist Islamists and one of the biggest drivers of antisemitism on the planet. And, for the past 23 months, the unashamed mouthpiece of Jihadist terrorists.

How, in other words, the BBC has lost its soul.

I will start by giving most BBC staffers the benefit of the doubt by assuming that those busily engaged in helping to turn the Jewish state into a “pariah,” did not start out as Jew-haters – except perhaps those indoctrinated from birth. I will assume that because the extremist, fundamentalist Islamists and Arab nationalists who they are actually assisting carefully mask their true, genocidal and colonizing objectives behind a façade of “Compassion for Palestinians” that they believe they are engaged in a “noble” cause.

Indeed, I imagine – and please forgive the florid metaphor – that “Compassion for Palestinians” was the soft, “gateway drug” that led to the broadcaster mainlining toxic anti-Israelism and hardline anti-Zionism. I will also assume that many of them sampled “Compassion for Palestinians” through a fake, KGB-invented Palestinian narrative that was first disseminated on campuses in the 1960s. There, over cups of mint tea at one of the Palestinian Societies springing up on UK campuses, or at one of the academic institutions lavishly endowed by oil-rich Middle East states – Exeter and LSE spring instantly to mind – clueless, impressionable, idealistic young undergrads were given a duplicitous, bogus version of Middle East history and told about Palestinian “victims” of Jewish  “oppression” and Jewish “colonizing.”

I should say here that despite knowing that the narrative is fake, I nevertheless think Palestinian people deserve sympathy as they are victims. Of inter-alia, their profoundly corrupt leaders; of psychopathic, Islamist Fundamentalist puppet-masters and of a UN agency needing a reason to exist. Just not of Jews or Israel.

There were many demonstrably untrue things claimed in this KGB confection including the ludicrous idea that Jews “arrived” in “Arab” Palestine only in the 20th century, when every population census, every (authentic) map, every contemporaneous news report, every travelogue, every international treaty – even the Bible  –  all confirm beyond doubt that Jews are the indigenous people of Palestine and have been a continuous presence for thousands of years, including as a majority in Jerusalem from Bible times until Jordan ethnically cleansed Jews in 1948.

But the main plank in this fake narrative, designed to groom (or “hook”) gullible westerners, was “Palestinian Refugees.” “Palestinian Refugees” were what, in marketing parlance, would be called the “hero product” but it had a major flaw in that Palestinian victimhood was not quite as it seemed. While there were indeed 700,000 refugees as stated in that weaselly “naqba” myth, a vast 600,000 Palestinians were welcomed into the new Jewish state, and also at the same time as the 700,000 Arabs became refugees, some 900,000 Jews had also became refugees after being expelled from Arab countries. But, as the cliche almost goes, never let a few facts (AKA truths) get in the way of a good narrative. Also, while Jewish and Israeli leaders ensured that the 900,000 Jewish refugees were swiftly absorbed and resettled, the Palestinian leaders – with searing immorality and breathtaking venality – decided to quite deliberately perpetuate the “Palestinian Refugee” crisis in order to exploit it for a variety of purposes.

Key among them was to persuade Westerners – especially influential Westerners such as journalists, politicians, academics, movie stars, literary icons, etc – that Palestinians were  “victims.” But “victims” had to fit Western notions of victims so Palestinian leaders quite deliberately, with blistering callousness – and in collusion with Arab Nationalists (often from oil-rich Gulf states), Islamist Fundamentalists and UNRWA –   kept thousands of Palestinians in camps similar to those “Living Museums” you find in former mining towns or on Manhattan’s East Side. Except the acute poverty was real and the “docents” didn’t go home at night. In spite of literally billions of dollars in Aid Cash flooding in, a cohort of downtrodden, impoverished Palestinians were kept as refugees in camps. But only the poorest and least well-connected, as the wealthier, better-connected Palestinians had either moved abroad years ago or lived in charming villas far away from refugee camps.

But beyond the use of “refugee camps” for “photo-opps” or to be shown off to gullible westerners – especially left-leaning hacks – on “Mint Tea and Sympathy” junkets, “Palestinian Refugees” were the gift that kept on giving. They kept the UNRWA gravy-train on track, of course but more importantly, all those billions in aid could be diverted straight to the Swiss – or more likely, Cayman Islands – bank accounts of the Palestinian leaders (starting with Yasser Arafat whose widow, Suha, and daughter, Zahwa, are among the wealthiest women on the planet), or to fund deadly terrorism, including life-long “pensions” for families of suicide bombers (what some wag has dubbed “pay for slay”), or to pay for the terror infrastructure, tunnels and rocket-launchers in Gaza. Also in Gaza, of course, refugees serve as human shields and as props and “extras” for the “starvation” libel, while across the Palestinian territories the refugees serve as signifiers of “Injustice” to assist in radicalization and recruitment for martyrdom.

But Palestinian refugees serve another even more vital PR purpose. As objects of universal sympathy and the visible – albeit manufactured –  symbol of “victimhood,” every action Israel takes to defend itself from Palestinian violence, Palestinian missiles or Palestinian terrorism can be framed as “excusable” or “resistance” and therefore as “justification” for a new round of Palestinian violence, Palestinian missiles or Palestinian terrorism.

And once the notion of Palestinian “victimhood” had been initially implanted, endless “confirmation” was provided by overtly biased coverage throughout the ’90s by, among others, The Guardian, The Independent and increasingly by the BBC itself, where allegations of bias from the Israeli government and Jewish leaders, led to the compilation of the never-published Balen Report.

And that, in combination with the last 25 years of the BBC carefully amplifying the perception of Palestinian victimhood by minimising – or failing entirely to report  – threat and harm to Israel while reporting every scintilla of harm –  or, more accurately, every allegation of harm – to Palestinians, is how the West was won for “Palestine” and how the BBC was lost…